Alexandria City Highpoint Trip Report

one area at Piney Court on campus of Episcopal High School (280+ ft)

Date: June 2001
Author: Dan Case

Access to the high school is no problem when there are summer sports camps in session. I parked in the lot near Centennial Hall, closest to the HP areas and not too far from the Braddock Road gate, which I neglected to use. There was no police officer, nor even an empty cruiser, there this day.

With all the people on campus, a solitary highpointer clad in business casual making apparently aimless wanderings around otherwise unused portions of the athletic fields attracted no attention whatsoever. I was able to satisfy any alternative for the HP that struck my fancy.

Which, since like all school athletic fields there's been a lot of working done on the ground around here, took in quite a few. So I wound up replicating my visit to Governor Livingston Regional High School (one of NJ Union's two candidate areas), on a blessedly smaller scale.

Following Roy Wallen's report, I lit out for the tennis courts and the fence. I found no need to follow it all the way around the courts. From the lot, the highest (and wooded) ground along it appears to be between the tennis courts and baseball diamond. I went up to it and walked along several hundred feet of this to be sure. Sometimes the land on the north side, the residential backyards on Piney Court, seemed higher but I think the highest ground was along the fence in the vicinity of a large pine stand.

But from here, the football practice field piqued my attention. It had probably been graded at some time, but by how much? I stood near the west goal posts where a slight crown appeared. Then there was the berm between the woods along Braddock and the east goal posts (the obvious highest ground of any type in the area, and just as clearly not natural). Finally I hit the earth shoring up to the football stadium wall at two corners, though these seemed lower.